High level performance of wireless Technology in IT Sector.

Wireless technology has made a significant presence in the booming IT sector over the past few years. The same technology can be applied suitably in the industrial control networks. Common wireless protocols such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can be utilized on the factory floor to provide solutions with high ROI for diagnostics, control and safety.
However, the difference in the operations of an IT and industrial domains pose a challenge in the application of wireless technology in the industrial domain. It is of utmost importance to first understand this difference before utilizing the wireless solutions developed for Information Technology assignment applications, as replacements for wired systems in the time critical scenarios on the shop floors.
There have been many implementations of wireless technology assignment in the production system on the shop floor, and most of them support only the lower level applications that require polling frequencies on the order of seconds or longer. However, the fundamental protocols of the wireless technology allow support to higher level and higher speed applications such as motion control and closed loop distributed logic, which still pose some challenge in their implementation in the industrial scenario. To address the challenges faced in implementation of wireless technology for higher level applications, following issues must be addressed in the wireless technology for manufacturing-

1. Determine the performance of Wireless technology in terms of data rate, transmission jitters and link reliability
2. Identify and develop best practices for wireless solution deployment and maintenance
3. Develop standardized test plans across industries
4. Implement standardized device testing , including automated performance bench marking
Device Testing-
1. Develop performance specifications , representing the requirements of an industrial control system
2. Develop a test plan in partnership with an industry that parameters wireless devices and networks
3. Develop and document standardized procedures for implementation of wireless controls, diagnostics and safety systems.
Wireless Network Control Simulator-
The performance of a network when using wireless interfaces can be simulated by a system scale simulator, which is currently under development. The performance measures include access and processing delays, Sampling rate, system bandwidth, failure modes, fault tolerance and robustness. The simulator currently provides simulation of delays related to-
1. Protocol stack and data processing
2. Multi-node access and arbitration
3. Interference and error recovery